Tiffany, I suggest that you forget about doing much in the way of upgrading that machine. The 6500/250 is a fine machine, but about all the upgrading you'll want do is add RAM, if you are typically using more than about half what you have now, or a larger hard drive. Adding RAM can make a substantial difference in performance if you're running at all tight. If you're running tight on hd space you can get a 30 gig IDE unit from Shreve (going out of bidness sale) for about $35-40 dollars, if you're quick.
Upgrading a 6500 to a G3 is possible, but you'll want to look at the dollar numbers very hard. Certainly, consider how cheaply you can get a new, or used, iMac before making that sort of investment. I have a 6500/250 although I only use it as a backup machine. (This is kept just to make me feel better. In fact, right now it's serving more as furniture than a computer, and I don't even have a monitor hooked up to it.) As I recall, System 8.6 was about the best to run on it. Yes, the 6500 will run 9.1, but I think 8.6 was actually a bit faster and more stable on that unit. At a minimum, you'd want to run 8.1 so that you can use the hfs+ file formatting. (Interesting tidbit about my 6500: It had a severe hd reliability issue when I first got it. The hd was replaced twice, all of the ram, the motherboard ... problem persisted. The problem was fixed by a lightening strike which took out an element of the unit that no-one suspected - the internal modem. Rock solid ever since.) The OSX disks you bought would contain system 9.2, which is not supposed to work on the 6500. Generally speaking, I've noticed that if you _need_ to use a system version that's more than two generations newer than the system that came on the machine, it's usually time for a new machine. The 6500 came with 7.5.5. But I've also noticed that most system upgrades are done for _want to_ reasons instead of _need to_ reasons. Trivia questions for the day: Who remembers the mfs file format - circa '84 to about '85? Do you remember the substantial change between hfs and mfs? Do you recall how, during the transition period from mfs to hfs you could tell with a glance which format was used on a floppy? ---------- >From: Tiffany Cox <xocynaffit at earthlink.net> >To: macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu >Subject: MacGroup: Help! Older mac troubles. >Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2003, 12:08 AM > > Hi, > > I'm a fairly new mac user. I am a student at a Midway College in the > heart of the bluegrass, so all my money goes towards tuition and books. > ;) Therefore, I bought a second hand 6500/250 and am trying to figure > out the cheapest way around buying a whole new computer. When I began > running my machine, it had OS 8.6 installed and so I went ahead and > installed Appleworks and other programs requiring at least 8.6. It ran > fine for a long while until it started freezing up on me. I then made > the mistake of doing a clean install. I did not consider that I only had > the Mac OS 8 CD and not the OS 8.5 CD. I went ahead and na?vely ebayed a > OS 9 CD and OS X CD with many (I suppose) cool accessories. I didn't > expect the OS X CD to really work, but I was really hoping the OS 9 > would. Suffice to say, it does not! > > Now for my question. Can anyone give me any hints as to how to > cheaply upgrade/replace my CPU as to get it to run at least OS 9 if not > OS X? I was sifting through eBay and xlr8yourmac.com, but my brain is > not working right or something and I don't want to pump any more money > than I have to into a machine that will not perform to my needs. Someone > on the xlr8yourmac site said that they upgraded to a G3/L2/400 CPU and > their 6500/250 would run OS 9 just fine. This all sounded like greek to > me. Specifically it was the details of "upgrade" and G3/L2/400 that > caught me off guard. All I know is the big box where you put the disk > needs to work better. I have some experience with taking apart computers > and making various components work on them, but I'm just not hip to the > lingo. > > I have really fallen in love with Macs and don't want to switch back > to the evil Microsoft systems. I think I've finally frankensteined my > old pentium to death, anyway. Any pity taken on a poor struggling > student would be greatly appreciated! > > Thanks, > > Tiffany > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be April 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be April 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
